Thom Zimny was a special call-in guest on Friday’s edition of E Street Radio’s Live From E Street Nation with host Dave Marsh, offering considerable insight into the creation of the new « Dream Baby Dream » video. Springsteen’s constant collaborator on video projects — also the hand behind the Clarence & Danny tribute montage from the Wrecking Ball Tour — Zimny continues to speak of his editing work as guided greatly by Bruce’s own director-like choices. « I think it’s that kind of collaboration… on every project. And this one was a real intense journey where every day we talked about it, and every day he was giving these ideas of where we can take it in terms of the message. »

According to Zimny, work on the video began before the Wrecking Ball Tour ended. « It started in the classic Bruce way of just a simple text and just the [« Dream Baby Dream »] track arriving, then a conversation with Jon [Landau], and it kinda grew from there…. It was great because it gave me a chance to go through a lot of the great stuff that Chris Hilson and the team captured throughout the tour. The great thing with Bruce is that he has this memory of those shows; it’s very clear. So he would reach out to me and say, ‘You’ve gotta get this show…. This moment happened…. These people were there….’ And at times it was just that sort of direction — his memories of the show and [his] impressions. And then I would go search through footage and really try to get what he was getting at in terms of a tone. »

« There’s a great thing that Bruce gave me in terms of direction, » Zimny continued, « which was to sort out those quiet moments and look in the footage for those faces that are translating the scope of the show. So you have moments of humor and moments of seriousness, to try to get within the one video the full range, and I think that was his greatest direction. »

Zimny initially cut footage for the video using the previously released live version of « Dream Baby Dream » from the Devils & Dust tour, but shortly thereafter he received a copy of the new studio version. Working with the new version of the song took the editing of the video to « another place, » said Zimny, « because there’s a lot of great things to work with, with the different rhythms and the background sounds and the way it’s produced…. I’ve listened to it so many times, and there’s so much going on in the background that I always am amazed. The way it picked up at the end is just really powerful — and really helped with the cutting, because it was a point of working with Bruce on the shot of people carrying him through the audience, and where that comes in musically, those sorts of details. How long that shot is on, and where he is placed in the journey of this story, those were things that I talked about and worked out with him every day, because it was a concentration on the show and the community and the fans. »